


To Be At Sea

by Dhobi ki Kutti (dhobikikutti)



Category: Shakespeare - Twelfth Night
Genre: Yuletide, challenge:Yuletide 2007, recipient:Petra LeMaitre
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-12-24
Updated: 2007-12-24
Packaged: 2017-10-03 09:19:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,460
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16491
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dhobikikutti/pseuds/Dhobi%20ki%20Kutti
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Cesario has tales of seraglios. Orsino listens.</p>
            </blockquote>





	To Be At Sea

**Author's Note:**

> Written for Petra LeMaitre in the Yuletide 2007 Challenge  
> Beta'ed with speed and wisdom by LC. Props also to the IRC crew.

Dusk had turned the sky into a purple bruise. There was a malicious little wind scurrying about, nipping at people's necks. Cesario felt it creep about his legs, and thought wistfully, not for the first time, about full-bodied skirts that shielded a body from so much more than a mean-spirited breeze. He rubbed one ankle against another as he stood waiting for the Duke to finish entertaining his visitors in the pompously ornate court gardens. Cesario could smell the tang of salt water in the air; no doubt, a storm would sweep over the harbour by night, pummelling the helplessly anchored boats.

"Boy!" The Duke's voice averted Cesario from further contemplation of shipwrecks.

"My lord?" Cesario run down the courtyard steps, then had to turn around and run back up them as the Duke strode past him, an imperious hand-gesture indicating that Cesario needed to follow. The Duke walked briskly, nay urgently, to the royal bed chamber, and Cesario hesitated respectfully outside for a moment before an impatient grunt drove him forward. He busied himself lighting the candles around the room; the moon had not yet risen, and Orsino, standing looking out of the window, was a darker smudge against the dark sky. Cesario could often tell what the Duke was feeling by watching his hands, but the Duke stood with them crossed in front of his chest, and Cesario could not tell whether the fingers were clenched, or tapping agitatedly against his arms.

"Is anything the matter, my lord?" Cesario ventured, finally.

"Hmm?" Orsino sounded deceptively absent. "No, no, not at all. I had a very interesting meeting with the ambassador. Very interesting indeed."

Cesario wished that Orsino would turn around. On the other hand, with the duke's back to him, he could continue to trace undetected with a covetous eye the broad shoulders, the ripple of dark hair that brushed the nape of the neck, the magnificent haunches encased in hose...

The Duke's voice slid like a sword into Cesario. "My boy, you have told me a great deal about the fancy shores you have visited before you came here, to me. Have you not?"

"My lord, I am always happy to entertain you with whatever little wit I have." Cesario wondered desperately if he had been caught out; if something the ambassador had said had exposed his garbled pastiches comprising of two parts Arabian Nights, three parts overheard bawdy sailors' tales and one part, God forgive her, the more lurid sections of the Bible.

"Ah, yes," the Duke said, dryly, "I have no doubt about the size of your wit."

Cesario dared to take a step closer to the window, and to the solid, warm body that stood between it and him. "My lord, how may I serve you?"

The Duke turned around. He was still a silhouette, though his eyes and teeth glinted in the candlelight.

"My boy," he said too gently, too expectantly, "In all your travels to this mysterious East, this decadent Orient of which you so kindly spin such wondrous tales to amuse me with, how is it you have yet to say aught about eunuchs?"

Cesario blanched. In truth, he did not know whether he hoped the Duke thought him a eunuch, or feared it. But to challenge the assumption, were it being made, would involve proof of the kind that a cheeky sailor page might offer up to an indulgent master, even if a maid, perforce, with all the heart in the world, could not. `Were that I _had_ no heart, in exchange for a more useful member of my anatomy', Viola thought despairingly. But self-preservation is the less noble cousin of courage, and desire an even more ravenous emotion.

"Why, my lord," said Cesario with a deferent smile, "I did not know if you would think it seemly."

"They are the most trusted advisors of the sultan, are they not?" Orsino's voice betrayed a prurient curiosity, but damned if Cesario couldn't take advantage of it.

"They are, my lord," he replied agreeably, "and also the instructors of their harems."

Orsino had stepped away from the window, and the candlelight threw strange shadows over the planes of his face. This close, Cesario could see the Duke's nostrils flare.

"Surely," the Duke commented softly, "even such perverse heathens would find such instructors lacking in the essentials."

Viola's hands reached out, of their own accord, palms up in submissive offering. "Oh, no, my lord. From what I have heard, eunuchs are most perfectly suited to teaching a woman how best to please a man. After all, without any... encumbrances of their own, they learn to use their talents solely to serve their masters. And they have many ways..."

"Such as their mouths?" Orsino ignored Cesario's hands and grasped his silk-smooth chin none too gently. Surely the Duke's finger's could feel the lack of an Adam's apple as Cesario dipped his head and warmed the Duke's wrists with the breath of his whispered reply. "So I have heard."

"Show me."

Viola had enough practice with hastily undone hose and doublet to seem proficient at the beginning, and after that, it seemed that love was potent enough a teacher to mask any flaws of inexperience. Confronted with the sights, smells and taste of a body so wholly alien, so hopelessly longed for, Viola drew everything into herself, an emptiness in her suddenly demanding to be filled. She felt her head being grasped and guided, but she sensed the hands holding her were losing control, shaken by a passion she had raised.

When it seemed clear that Orsino was finished, Viola rested her forehead for a moment against his thigh, feeling the rough hairs tickle her nose as she struggled to keep her mouth shut and not soil Orsino's clothes. A salty bitter taste, it seemed, the love of men had. She swallowed, and rose as she felt Orsino's fingers tap against her neck. Her hose chafed between her legs with strange intensity. She looked up at his lips, so noble, so sweet, and leaned in.

The Duke pushed Cesario towards the flagon of wine that stood on the carved chest near the door. "Such fealty towards your master should not go unrewarded," he murmured with amusement, and even fondness in his voice. "You may drink of the Duke's own wine, for surely your service warrants it."

Cesario stumbled, once, before reaching towards the wine. And if his voice sounded strange, well, the Duke knew what his throat had been through. "I thank you, my Lord."

The Duke patted him on the cheek. "Poor boy, you are not cut out for the seraglio, are you?"

And in spite of everything, Viola felt a rush of desperation overthrow her resentment. "I daresay, my lord, I am willing to be anything you require me to be."

Orsino moved away. Perhaps there was an innocuous reason for his choosing to wash his hands in the basin, but Viola, her body aflame with rejection, could not see it.

"Ah, Cesario..." Orsino smiled crookedly. "I fear that our good priests would have nothing to preach against were the body to supply everything the heart desired. No, there is a reason these heathen kings do not understand the mercy of God, and after all, can all the harems in the world replace the love of a pure woman's heart?"

Cesario stood stiffly upon attendance to his master while in some corner of the soul, Viola wondered whether pure women ever felt this sticky itching between their legs, this shameless jealousy of the bitch who could writhe in ecstasy under the stroking of her master's hand.

"I think my lovely Artemis is ready for the hounds." The Duke looked with affection at the little beast, who had crept out from under the canopied bed and whose warm tongue was, apparently, not as repulsive as Cesario's.

"Shall you throw her to them?" Cesario asked, because a youthful boy page is expected to be frivolous enough to get away with such flippancy.

The Duke laughed. "Why, my boy, I'll make sure she has as sweet a wooing as ever won a gentle maid. After all, we men of the world must not be permitted to coarsen everything with our lust."

Cesario turned to the door. The Duke's burdens were clearly relieved, and his diversion with the dog was so clearly fulfilling. There was no further need of Cesario, and Viola wanted to escape to her own chamber, and weep.

"Oh, and boy! Tomorrow I have a very particular errand for you. One of the greatest importance and discretion, but I rely on your devotion to my cause."

Cesario paused in the doorway, angling his face in the shadows.

"Have you heard of the Lady Olivia?"


End file.
